The historic SCH Men’s Golf team has faced extreme adversity since the COVID-19 Pandemic, falling into a four-year win drought across Inter-Ac Matchups. While the program has achieved multiple wins in non-Inter-Ac play and wins at State Championships, they have failed to defeat any Inter-Ac teams across the last twenty-four invitationals. These struggles have raised a multitude of questions about the future of the program, but this year’s team is determined to be different. SCH Golf appears to be the strongest team the school has seen since COVID-19 shocked the world. like the strongest team the school has seen since before COVID, our golfers hope to snap the win drought this season. However, as the team approaches the final few weeks of Inter-Ac golf invitationals, they have two more chances to end the streak.
SCH Men’s Golf faces strong competition in the Inter-Ac, often against future Division 1 golfers who attend rival schools. This is one reason why SCH Golf has fallen into such a long losing streak.
One reason the team struggles is the need for more player development on the JV squad. Senior Dalton Deangelis, a golfer who has spent most of his time on JV but is now an elite varsity player said, “You would think as a member of the JV team that you would learn a lot more.” Deangelis added, “I actually think I’ve learned the most this year on Varsity with Coach Vaughn than I have in the past years I’ve been on JV.”
New Varsity member and senior golfer Michael Lee added similar insight about JV Golf practice stating, “Even in my short time on the team Coach Vaughn has given me numerous tips that have helped my game out significantly.” Similar to DeAngelis, Lee has seen growth in his golf game since being called up to Varsity.
The player development issue is important but is not the sole reason for the golf team’s failures. Again, SCH Men’s Golf faces difficult competition in the Inter-Ac with many Division 1 golfers produced yearly by our rival schools … SCH Golf’s opponents have top players who can consistently shoot below forty every match. SCH Golf players have had glimpses of sub-40 rounds from players like Alex Topping,, Josh Miller, and myself but these scores aren’t consistent enough to compete with the other schools. Every match the team plays, they are underdogs, and it is tough to overcome this deficit.
While teams like Haverford, Malvern, and Episcopal have created systems that produce recruits at colleges like North Carolina State University, Richmond University, and multiple Ivy League schools, SCH has produced zero recruits at any level of NCAA Golf since Covid. Having no recruits has led to membership issues in the program.
Senior Andrew Blum talked about how the win drought drove his decision to quit the golf team to play soccer during his senior year. Blum played varsity golf in his sophomore and junior years and was a solid scorer for the squad. “Going to every golf match and losing by at least ten strokes as a team was humiliating, and also being the worst in my group every playing at the five spot wasn’t the best experience,” said Blum. His decision was not necessarily about lack of player development, but more about the skill level of other teams in the Inter-Ac being way above where SCH was when he was with the team.
Varsity Men’s Golf coach Francis Vaughn attributes the team’s struggles to having fewer tournament-ready players than the rest of the Inter-Ac. “Our players don’t play as many tournaments as the other teams’ players do. So we’re a little behind the eight ball in the beginning,” said Vaughn.
Vaughn also talked about how many golfers on the team play main sports that are not full golf players and instead use golf to fill a sports requirement: “A lot of players on our team are not golfers, they’re other athletes from other sports. So it’s a challenge because to get to the level of the players we play against, we need to practice, and it’s a six-week window to get as many of those fundamentals and to be a habit, and once they become routine, they have a chance to play better.” Vaughn suggested that the team would have better results if the players were tournament-ready and played more golf consistently during the offseason.
Is this the year for SCH Golf? Senior golf co-captain Alex Topping thinks so. “I would say this is the best team we’ve had in at least the last four years,” said Topping. The stats back him up. In the last two matches, SCH has put up their best team scores since 2020 with a 201 at their home course, Sunnybrook, where they lost by one stroke to Germantown Academy highlighted by sub-40 rounds from Topping and Josh Miller (senior) and a 205 at Merion West losing by three strokes to Germantown Academy, highlighted by sub-40 rounds from Topping and myself.
If this is the best team we’ve had, these next four weeks leave us with what seems to be the last chance to bring glory back to the SCH Men’s Golf program.
